Documentary celebrates the vanishing Jewish deli

David (Ziggy) Gruber, right, co-owner of Kenny & Ziggy's New York Delicatessen Restaurant in Houston, chats up a customer in “Deli Man.”(Photo: Cohen Media Group)

In 1931, New York City's Department of Public Markets listed 1,550 kosher delicatessens in the five boroughs alone. Today, there are an estimated 150 in all of North America. Much to its credit, the documentary "Deli Man" wisely chooses not to bemoan the decline but to celebrate the robust survivors that remain as well as the culture they preserve.

The unexpectedly charming documentary, directed by Erik Greenberg Anjou, is warm and piquant and understands the reasons for the decline of the deli. It's well aware of the wages of assimilation, and it knows that the waves of Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Europe who gave the kosher deli its unique flavor are no more.

Still, taking as its motto Damon Runyon's thought that "there are two types of people in the world, those who love delis and those you shouldn't associate with," the film focuses on describing the essence of the deli experience and conveying it to a waiting world.

Our main guide on this excursion is the shambling but appealing David (Ziggy) Gruber, a third-generation deli man and the Ziggy in Kenny & Ziggy's New York Delicatessen Restaurant, a much-loved establishment that is the toast of Houston. Don't be surprised at the location. "The south is like 'Deliverance' for Jews," one witness insists. "Everyone down here is related."

Grumpy but good-hearted, and the subject of much interest by friends who want to see him married, Gruber "has been an 80-year-old Jew since he was a little kid," according to his younger brother. Gruber flirted with serious cuisine, at one time working with Gordon Ramsay at the Waterside Inn, but the siren song of the deli, the chance to carry on the tradition of his beloved grandfather, was too strong to resist.

He runs a great deli and is also something of a deli historian who collects menus from eminent New York establishments like Lindy's and the Stage. He's the kind of guy whose idea of a vacation in New York is visiting Acme Smoked Fish and comparing notes on the quality of whitefish with its operator.

To go further back in deli history, "Deli Man" enlists writer and food historian Jane Ziegelman, who relates it was homesick Germans who started the first New York delis on the Lower East Side in the 1840s and '50s. Eastern European Jews patronized these places (sweatshop workers especially liked the deli's early versions of fast-food) and soon made them their own.

"Deli Man" also provides stories of legendary delis like New York's Carnegie and introduces us to deli owners who are doing things differently. (Caplansky's in Toronto emphasizes its ethnic qualities with staff T-shirts reading "the Bad News Jews.") But the most fascinating element in the film is the revelation that many second- and third-generation folks from deli families are passionate owners of old-style establishments. It's not just the schmaltz that gets in your blood in this business. It's the tradition as well.